a voice comes to me, from the bottom of the mountains, from the very
center of the Earth. Up through the floor and thin mattress, it envelops
me, charges me. If you live, the voice says, you’ve got to stand for
something.
“I’ll write to you,” Béla says in the morning, when we say goodbye.
It’s not love. I don’t hold him to it.
* * *When I return to Košice, Magda meets me at the train station. Klara
has been so possessive of me since our reunion that I have forgotten
what it is like to be alone with Magda. Her hair has grown. Waves
frame her face. Her eyes are bright again. She looks well. She is
bursting with gossip from the three weeks that I’ve been away. Csicsi
has broken things off with his girlfriend and is now unabashedly
courting Klara. e Košice survivors have formed an entertainment
club, and she has already promised that I will perform. And Laci, the
man from the top of the train, has written to tell us that he has
received an affidavit of support from his relatives in Texas. Soon he
will join them in a place called El Paso, she tells me, where he will
work in their furniture store and save money for medical school.
“Klara better not humiliate me by marrying first,” Magda says.
is is how we will heal. Yesterday, cannibalism and murder.
Yesterday, choosing blades of grass. Today, the antiquated customs
and proprieties, the rules and roles that make us feel normal. We will
minimize the loss and horror, the terrible interruption of life, by living
as though none of it happened. We will not be a lost generation.
“Here,” my sister says. “I have something for you.” She hands me
a n envelope, my name written on it in the cursive script we were
taught to write in school. “Your old friend came by.”
For a moment, I think she means Eric. He is alive. Inside the
envelope is my future. He has waited for me. Or he has already moved